From left to right pitcher Andrew Miller, Tony Clark executive director of the baseball players association, Bruce Meyer chief union negotiator, and New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer were the core union negotiation team as they are seen here in Jupiter FL on Tue Mar 1, 2022 (AP News photo)

By Jerry Feitelberg

The Major League Players Association and Major League Baseball have come to terms and have reached an agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement that will run until 2027. After 99 days of a baseball lockout at 12:37 pm PST on Thu Mar 10th both sides had a handshake and got a deal done. One more step is needed and that’s 23 votes from the owners side to ratify the deal.

The new deal was passed by the union 26-12. 20 votes were the minimum to pass the agreement on the union side. MLB announced that the lockout will be lifted and spring training will commence immediately and opening day is scheduled to start on April 7th once the owners agree to the new deal.

Trades and free agencies will begin and player deals will be in the works according to MLB. Clubs can start calling players from South America, Central America, Japan, Korea and other places to come back and report to camp.

MLB teams will play a 162 game schedule. Spring Training will run from approximately next Tue Mar 15th until April 6th. The work stoppage was baseball’s first since 1994-95 when the baseball strike canceled the 1994 World Series.

The lockout began Dec 2, 2021 and there no talks by the owners and players. Things sprang into action during the last week of February and during negotiations some meetings lasted until 3:00AM it was a good three weeks of negotiations and at some points it looked as talks would stall and it looked like they would get a deal done.

Amongst some of the agreed bullet points:

#1 Collective Bargaining Tax $230 million in 2023 and runs up to $244 million in the final year of the CBA

#2 $700,000 MLB minimum salary and tops out at $780,000 in the final year of the new CBA.

#3 The pre arbitration bonus pool $50 million.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said that lost games would be made up as part of a doubleheader during the regular season which was suppose to start on March 31st.

Jerry Feitelberg is an Oakland A’s beat writer and podcaster